We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the fullest.


~Marcel Proust

 

It wasn’t long after my daughter was born that one of her superpowers was revealed. Her body had the uncanny ability to reject (sometimes violently) what it did not want.

 

This resulted in an enormous number of outfit changes for herself and anyone in a 3-foot radius, as well as a family mantra. To counter her eventual self-consciousness about the whole thing we all started chanting: Better out than in.

 

Over a decade later, that mantra remains (as do vestiges of her superpower), and has taken on a whole new dimension of meaning.

 

I’ve just returned from Thailand. Lest you picture exotic beaches, tropical drinks and nonstop massages (Ok… maybe there was some of that…) let me inform you that the work we did was grueling. I personally touched some of the darkest, stickiest, stinkiest inner landscape I have ever experienced. For someone whose recent decades have been a constant quest for personal and spiritual healing, I remain surprised at how much… yuckiness… remains.

 

It would be easy to believe that despite all the exploration and excavation I’m constantly doing that if something is lodged that deeply in my psyche, maybe it should stay there. Locked up, never to see the light of day.

 

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way. Trauma, grief, resentment and anger wreak havoc on our bodies and minds, even when we don’t know (or allow!) that they’re there. Even as I experience how painful it is to re-live what I only wanted to bury, I am reminded of the mantra I created: Better out than in.

• Better to grieve a loss, even if the culturally accepted timeframes have passed, than to numb the heartache with denial
• Better to curse the injustices in the world, than to pretend that ‘everything is fine’.
• Better to offer the sounds of rage to the woods or a pillow, than to swallow that particular poison

 

To Remember:

Standing strongly in the face of what can feel impossibly hard is the definition of courage.

Knowing that anything we suppress takes us farther from the truth of our divinity is wisdom.

Loving what is, no matter how gruesome we perceive it to be, is the key to our liberation.

 

When my Dark Witch, the one who can just as easily use her powers for evil as for good, is let out into the light of day, all her pent-up wrath dissolves. She has nothing more to push against, and so her power transforms. Instead of being dangerous, she becomes the one who stands up for herself and protects others. Her antics can be naughty, certainly, but her fire and ire blaze with love.

 

To Do:

Come to know what lies beneath, no matter how dark and scary, and the path to healing has begun.

Honor your body, mind and soul when they react, as they are showing you what needs your attention.

Befriend the parts of you that make you cringe in shame, or contract in fear, and their imprisonment of your heart will end.

 

Even my daughter knows… better out than in.

 

Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.

~ Rainier Maria Rilke

 

** special props to Sarah Avant Stover